1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns the printing industry and more particularly the printing of multiple page booklets from a continuously printed web which is folded and cut as necessary by tool holding work boxes mounted on cooperative operational rollers to accomplish the making of a multiple page booklet. Further, the present invention contemplates improvements over the prior art in the particular area of the tools provided in the boxes to effect a tucking of a bight of a printed web into cooperative open grippers and at the same time to effect a cutting of the web bight to thus divide the web into two pieces just prior to the gripping of the severed web portions. These combination functions performed at one station in the revolution of the operational rollers cause the elimination of the severing of the printed web at auxiliary stations around those cooperative operational rollers.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art is best embodied in our own earlier presently pending patent application, Ser. No. 758,079, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,073,485, entitled APPARATUS FOR PRINTING MULTIPLE PAGE BOOKLETS. In our earlier patent application we defined in a detail manner the making of a multiple page booklet from a single continuously printed web. In that prior patent application we showed cooperative operational rollers engaging and performing work on a continuously printed web. One of these work steps involved the employment of a tucking tool on one operational roller to cause a tucking of a bight of printed web into the open jaws of a gripper mechanism on an adjoining operational roller. The uncut bight of the printed web was thus held in the gripping elements and the severing of the web was necessarily at a position spaced from the bight gripping elements. At this spaced apart station a cooperative knife on one operational roller and an anvil on the other operational roller effected a severing of the printed web. The present invention concerns the combination of these two work operations at one station whereby the printed web is not only tucked into web grippers but is simultaneously severed at the position of the formed bight so that the grippers act to hold the severed pieces of printed web.
Our own prior U.S. Pat. No. 3,857,314 shows and describes box-like, tool holding elements mounted externally of an operational roller in a manner to obtain infinite adjustment of the box on the roller. This same adjustable feature for the tool carrying boxes is utilized in our above mentioned copending application, Ser. No. 758,079, as well as in the subject application.
In addition our earlier U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,359 shows details of how trim-out portions of a web may be removed from the machine by the engagement of the trim-out with a pin and the subsequent stripping of that trim-out from the pin. The present invention utilizes the features and the environment of our own prior inventions but goes further in providing a new inventive concept in the environment of cooperative operational rollers; that of simultaneously tucking and cutting a printed web into web grippers and an anvil. This then provides for the simultaneous gripping of the bight of a printed web and the severing of that bight into two pieces in a single station of tangentially meeting tool holding boxes on cooperative operational rollers.